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ashthigs7 's review for:
Inheritance
by Christopher Paolini
DID NOT FINISH: 61%
I just can’t finish it - and I even bumped it up to 1.7x to try and get through 😭 I only have 7 hours left but I cannot stand the writing. I feel like in anyone else’s hands this could be a very compelling story. But as it is, it’s just… very pretentious, most of the characters are insufferable and don’t deserve their own chapters (Roran and Nasuada), sooooo many chapters can be cut out and nothing would affect the plot. I’m sorry, why did we have a whole 37 minute chapter describing what it was like for Eragon and Saphira to be in a storm? Why was there a 29 minute chapter devoted to a dwarven art of playing with mud that had absolutely zero bearing on the plot? That might have been an interesting tidbit when Eragon spent time at the dwarves’ home but it did NOT belong in this book, especially since Orik barely has a presence in the first 75% of it, and unless somehow thardsvergûndnzmal is the key to destroying Galbatorix (spoiler alert: it’s not).
Paolini has a gift for going into MINUTE detail of things we care nothing about and then glazing over the actual important plot points that we would love to hear about 😭 all in all, just so so frustrating. Tell me why we neverrrrr get an Arya chapter, who has been mentioned in almost every single one of Eragon’s chapters and is ACTUALLY a key player in the series, but we have to keep switching to freaking farm boy-turned-warrior-god-somehow Roran? Even Nasuada’s chapters really add NOTHING to the plot. I did an experiment and skipped over them and guess what? I missed nothing and saved time, so that’s never great for a book.
It is a huge bummer, because I think Eragon, the first book, was very good, and the series as a whole had so much potential. But it gets to a point where you just. don’t. care. After hearing about the tiniest little details of the night sky after a storm and then never actually getting to hear Eragon’s true name - it’s just like yeah, you’re making it really hard for me to care. Like you can’t focus all your details on things that don’t matter and then glaze over the actual important stuff your reader would be interested in over and over and OVER again. At some point it just gets repetitive and predictable. Why do I care to hear about Eragon’s process of discovering his true name when I won’t ACTUALLY hear about it? Why do I care what the Varden is dealing with when we hear about the minutiae of their day to day but when the key players - all the leaders and kings - get together to discuss their plans, it’s literally just listed out as “and then their discussion turned to matters of food, how to get into Dras Leona, and finally their final assault on Galbatorix and Uru’baen” ok???? That’s it? We get a LIST? Yeah this 31 hour audiobook could’ve been at MOST 20 hours and it would’ve been a better conclusion.
Final thoughts and some notes I made during my listening and I’ll be done with my rant lol: I think one of the biggest mistakes made is that Paolini doesn’t trust his readers to understand what he’s saying, to the point where he is bashing us over the head with summaries of action sequences that JUST happened, using Eragon’s thoughts to drive the plot, and again, the going into extreme detail over the littlest things. Here are some examples:
“‘Here?’
Paolini has a gift for going into MINUTE detail of things we care nothing about and then glazing over the actual important plot points that we would love to hear about 😭 all in all, just so so frustrating. Tell me why we neverrrrr get an Arya chapter, who has been mentioned in almost every single one of Eragon’s chapters and is ACTUALLY a key player in the series, but we have to keep switching to freaking farm boy-turned-warrior-god-somehow Roran? Even Nasuada’s chapters really add NOTHING to the plot. I did an experiment and skipped over them and guess what? I missed nothing and saved time, so that’s never great for a book.
It is a huge bummer, because I think Eragon, the first book, was very good, and the series as a whole had so much potential. But it gets to a point where you just. don’t. care. After hearing about the tiniest little details of the night sky after a storm and then never actually getting to hear Eragon’s true name - it’s just like yeah, you’re making it really hard for me to care. Like you can’t focus all your details on things that don’t matter and then glaze over the actual important stuff your reader would be interested in over and over and OVER again. At some point it just gets repetitive and predictable. Why do I care to hear about Eragon’s process of discovering his true name when I won’t ACTUALLY hear about it? Why do I care what the Varden is dealing with when we hear about the minutiae of their day to day but when the key players - all the leaders and kings - get together to discuss their plans, it’s literally just listed out as “and then their discussion turned to matters of food, how to get into Dras Leona, and finally their final assault on Galbatorix and Uru’baen” ok???? That’s it? We get a LIST? Yeah this 31 hour audiobook could’ve been at MOST 20 hours and it would’ve been a better conclusion.
Final thoughts and some notes I made during my listening and I’ll be done with my rant lol: I think one of the biggest mistakes made is that Paolini doesn’t trust his readers to understand what he’s saying, to the point where he is bashing us over the head with summaries of action sequences that JUST happened, using Eragon’s thoughts to drive the plot, and again, the going into extreme detail over the littlest things. Here are some examples:
“‘Here?’
‘No, here,’ she said, pointing to the spot with her left index finger.”
Dude…. The extraneous detail in this book is insane. We don’t need to know exactly how Arya pointed. Just say she pointed, the reader will understand how she did so. No one has ever naturally pointed with their pinky finger unless they had no other fingers left.
Paolini spends four, five paragraphs describing things in minute detail, like the attack on the Varden’s camp by Murtagh and Thorn (in this instance the detail wasn’t that bad), but then he finishes it up and ruins everything he just established by saying “the whole sequence of events, from Angela, to the werecats, to the soldiers, transpired with such speed that Eragon barely had time to react”…. I find that hard to believe. Also, I DO NOT need a brief summary of things that happened that I JUST read about!! There’s so much TELLING being done. Also, I don’t know what it is, but I cannot STAND how Paolini uses Eragon’s thoughts sometimes. “‘Balance is gone,’ Eragon thought. ‘Have to clear my mind. Have to…’” Paolini, buddy, I KNOW Eragon’s balance is gone, I just listened to how he stumbled when he left the tent and just spent the last 10 paragraphs listening to how he’s drunk and under the influence. Use Eragon’s thoughts for something else… “‘how many soldiers are there?’ he wondered. ‘Are we surrounded?’” Like, you can clearly tell that’s what PAOLINI wants us to think, he wants us to be all “omg is this it for the Varden, they’re surrounded! 😱” but it just doesn’t work!!
“He knew that if he pricked himself, he would catch blood poisoning from the unwashed wool they had been drawn through” - why does this observation matter? When the soldiers Angela kills are STABBED by her knitting needles, and not killed from freaking blood poisoning? Also, why on earth is Eragon thinking this in the middle of the Varden getting ambushed? Like, Paolini is saying this and then following it up with the whole “this happened really quickly” how are we supposed to believe that? When you’re making Eragon have stupid, completely unnecessary observations in what is supposed to be an action packed exciting fight sequence?